299 Connecticut Museums and One Special Child

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Stephen Wood, of West Hartford, who writes about exploring Connecticut museums and curiosities with his family, at the Ukrainian Museum and Library of Stamford.CreditAndrew Sullivan for The New York Times

“I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to accomplish today,” he said of his trip to the museum, the 299th he has visited since starting his Connecticut Museum Quest website in 2006. “But I’ll definitely come back and give it the attention it deserves.”

There were two issues that complicated Mr. Wood’s goal of distilling for his readers what makes a trip to the Ukrainian Museum worthwhile. The first was that he was being interviewed and photographed for this article. The second was more familiar: the presence of his 9-year-old special-needs son, Damian, whose antics can sometimes make time spent at a museum a little overstimulating.

In 2005, Mr. Wood, 42, of West Hartford, began thinking about starting a humor website that would make gentle fun of obscure local cultural sites, like the New Britain Industrial Museum. After a bit of research, he determined that Connecticut, though the country’s third smallest state by area, is home to more than 600 museums.

“I used to pass a billboard for the New Britain Industrial Museum on Columbus Boulevard,” he said. “It didn’t sound like an exciting place, and my wife grew up there and she had never been there and none of her friends had ever been there. So I spoke with a friend I used to write with and I said, ‘How funny would it be to go to these museums nobody has ever heard of and write about them?’ ”

Then he encountered a problem: The New Britain Industrial Museum did not lend itself to the kind of fun Mr. Wood, a financial researcher by day, was intending to poke.

“We went, and the retired gentleman who was volunteering there came over and spoke to us,” he said. “Everything changed. The museum was a passion for a lot of people, and it was actually really cool and interesting.”

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The Ukrainian Museum and Library of Stamford.CreditAndrew Sullivan for The New York Times

His site’s first post, dated Oct. 6, 2006, was dedicated to the New Britain Industrial Museum. (Headline: “Not Just Boring Machines.”) In it, Mr. Wood praised the volunteer who had been so gracious.

“For Warren Kingsbury the NBIM was a labor of love,” the post read. “For him, the history of New Britain’s rich industrial past was something to be proud of and something to share. I immediately knew that he pined away at night yearning for the bustling city of 1918 rather than the drug-ridden shell of a city it had become. It was impossible not to get excited about this stuff — even though the large majority of the collection was, well, rather mundane.”

In the years since, Mr. Wood has broadened the topics that he covers beyond just museum visits. (To reflect that evolution, the website’s name is changing to CTMQ.org this month.) He might now write about hiking, or breweries, or some of Connecticut’s kookier personalities. But the challenge of living with Damian, whose birth occurred in the same year as the website’s, has been a consistent attraction for certain readers.

“People really started getting interested in the family story,” he said.

When Damian was 2, tests showed that he had Smith-Magenis Syndrome, a rare genetic condition that is caused by an abnormality in the 17th chromosome. Those who have the syndrome usually have mild to moderate intellectual disability, gross motor delays like crawling and walking later than most children, sleep disorders and hard-to-handle behavioral issues.

“He can be difficult and he can scare people,” Mr. Wood said. “And we’ve gotten to places and had to turn around two minutes later.”

That was not the case at the Ukrainian Museum, where Damian busied himself making music on a dulcimer in one of the galleries and looking at folk costumes and pysanky — elaborately decorated Ukrainian Easter eggs — in another.

“Damian was a well-behaved boy,” Lubow Wolynetz, the museum’s curator, said after the visit. “I had absolutely no indication of the syndrome he’s affected with.”

But in the car on the way, Damian began striking himself, a common trait among children with the syndrome.

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His sons, Damian, 9, right in photo at top, and Calvin, 4, at the museum.CreditAndrew Sullivan for The New York Times

“He’ll punch himself in the head repeatedly,” Mr. Wood said. “You never really know what’s going to set him off. We always have a contingency plan.”

Sometimes, though, the Woods forge ahead even after Damian has problems. Such was the case last year, when the family, including Mr. Wood’s wife, Hoang, and their younger son, Calvin, 4, visited the Railroad Museum of New England, in Thomaston.

“I’ll spare you the details,” writes Mr. Wood in his June 1, 2014, post about the visit. “But his tantrum forced us to make our way very quickly through the station exhibits and the showpiece cars near it.”

Ms. Wood said she admired what her husband was doing with the site. “It’s a way to get Damian out and a way to get all of us out instead of us being stuck at home every weekend,” she said.

Damian’s struggles are many, but there are also achievements, and Mr. Wood chronicles those, too.

While hiking on the Godard Preserve in Granby in 2014, for example, Damian was unsure about a shaky footpath. “But he learned to step on a log while crossing a creek, and he said, ‘I got it,’ ” Mr. Wood said. “Now he’s not afraid anymore.”

“It’s a special-needs parent cliché that the highs we have with him are higher than any parent of a typical kid, and it’s true,” he said.

Mr. Wood said he wanted to destroy the myth that there is nothing to do in Connecticut. But he has another aim as well.

“I want to entertain people, and I want people to get out there and see things that are very close to them that they don’t know exist,” Mr. Wood said.

“At the same time, I want people to become aware of families with special needs. Yes, it’s difficult. But acceptance is a big thing.”

Connecticut GemsSteve Wood has made a quest of visiting as many Connecticut museums as possible. Here are some of his favorites, with comments. More at ctmuseumquest.com (or, soon, CTMQ.org):THE GLASS HOUSE, New Canaan: “Philip Johnson’s modern masterwork is but one of several architectural gems on the property, which also includes a sculpture gallery and art gallery.”HADDAM SHAD MUSEUM, Haddam: “Housed in an authentic Connecticut River shad shack, it contains nothing but items related to the official state fish and the nearly forgotten industry it supported.”I-PARK, East Haddam: “Essentially an expansive outdoor art studio that holds a few open houses per year; each visit provides entirely new installations in the woods, on the lake and among the trees.”THE LUDDY/TAYLOR CONNECTICUT VALLEY TOBACCO MUSEUM, Windsor: “It comes as a surprise to many that central Connecticut has been growing some of the best leaf tobacco in the world for over a century. Martin Luther King worked in the fields here.”THE MUSEUM OF AMERICA AND THE SEA, Mystic Seaport: “Arguably Connecticut’s best tourist attraction; so vast and so well done.”THE PETERS RAIL ROAD MUSEUM, Wallingford: “Nothing short of incredible. The labor of love of one man, Dave Peters (with a helping hand from his wife), this nearly secret little affair is tucked efficiently into Mr. Peters’s home. Visits are by appointment only, but if you make the effort, I guarantee you you’ll leave with a completely newfound love of trains.”TIMEEXPO: THE TIMEX MUSEUM, Waterbury: “Hurry, it’s slated to close on Sept. 30. What will be lost? A beautifully presented history of Waterbury’s important role in horology. From the earliest mechanical clocks up through Timex’s stint in the Brass City.”YALE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY, New Haven: “Revealing my ignorance, I wasn’t expecting to see Picassos, Matisses, Motherwells, Rothkos or Van Goghs in my home state. The galleries are huge and impressive — and free.”

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